Tag: Featured

    A teenager is in hospital after jumping off a balcony during a theatre performance and landing on a spectator. The 18-year-old male is thought to have been watching Grease at the Grand Theatre in Blackpool when he plunged off the edge around 9.30pm. Audience members were said to have shouted and screamed as they watched him land on top of the female spectator. Robert Simmill, who was at the performance with his mother, girlfriend and her mother, told the Telegraph he saw a body fall 10 minutes into the second half. The 17-year-old, from Lancaster, said: “There was a loud thud as he hit the centre aisle. Everyone around got up and started screaming and shouting. People from the audience were shouting at the actors to stop. I looked up to the third tier as I was in the stall...

    A paraplegic woman has been penalised by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) after resigning from a part-time job she sought herself but was unable to continue due to ill health. The woman had her benefits stopped after she gave up working eight hours a week for a consultancy agency. The DWP allow disabled people to receive sickness benefits if they are employed fewer than 16 hours a week and earn less than £115.50 for it. Speaking to the Guardian under the pseudonym Sarah Jones, she said she received written permission from the DWP to start work. But by March, Ms Jones told the DWP she had to resign because the job was taking a toll on her health. A month later, the DWP fraud department accused her of working without permission. Ms Jones was asked to fill in a "per...

    House prices, estate agents for sale and to let. Signs of faltering demand in the housing market are prompting estate agents and analysts to suggest England’s house price boom may be ending. Paul Smith, chief executive of the Haart agency — which has more than 100 branches — said: “We believe the nation has now neared the limit in terms of price rises.” Inquiries declined in April at their second-highest rate since 2008, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors — a trend that Mike Prew, equity analyst at investment bank Jefferies, said “signals this slowdown could morph into a period of sustained house price deflation”. Drops in this Rics measure are strongly correlated with price falls about a year later, Mr Prew added. “The balance of surveyors expecting...